Rail Travel in Europe
Lyn and
I have just returned from a month (September/October 2013) in Europe, travelling between cities by rail.
We booked all the trips directly with European websites and found this
much cheaper than using Eurail passes or their equivalents, or by using
specialist travel agents in Australasia, which appear to charge two or three
times what we actually paid for the rail travel.
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| Our German ICE train arrives at the Station |
Some
helpful advice:
· The
best Internet site to get an overall idea of what might be available is The Man
in Seat Sixty-one ( www.seat61.com/). This website contains all you could ever want to
know about the type of trains available and gives some ideas on pricing. Use this as an online guide to plan your trip.
· The German DB rail site (www.bahn.de/i/view/overseas/en/index.shtml ) provides a comprehensive train schedule with all
of Europe’s train trips . Any trains you book on this site must arrive or depart from Germany (or are totally within Germany), but you can seek out individual travel
trains and times between any European cities. We also had an up-to-date
copy of Thomas Cooks’ Rail Timetables, but this wasn’t really needed.
· We used the German (DB) rail site, the Hungarian (MAV) site and the Romanian (CFR) Internet sites to book and pay for our tickets. You need to register as a customer the first time you use each site. The
earlier bookings are made, the cheaper the prices. For example, bookings on
the DB Rail site open three months before travel, which is when prices are lowest. We knew what days we wanted
to travel because we pre-booked our accommodation, so this worked well for us. Because tickets much closer to the day of travel are more expensive, a rail pass may be more worthwhile if you want to keep your travel dates flexible.
·
DB
Bahn. This is
the most client-friendly site. The prices are in Euros, just choose
your train and go. One oddity is that you can book the train three months in
advance, but actual seat bookings (which cost four euros each) can only be made two months
in advance, so you will need to make seat bookings at a later stage if you want
them, either via the Internet or after you arrive in Germany. A further
aberration is that any seat booking that
crosses an international border cannot be made over the Internet, and must be
phoned through before you travel or made once you arrive in Europe. However, we managed this
without any real problems, despite requiring last minute changes after floods damaged the Berlin to Amsterdam rail
line.
·
MAV
(Hungarian rail). We made three bookings over this website for
trains that either left or arrived in Budapest. The prices are in Euros. Tickets are not sent over the Internet, just coded emails, which are then used in special ticket machines at
major Hungarian rail stations to get printed tickets. We had absolutely no
problems in using these at Budapest.
The
MAV website (elvira.mav-start.hu/elvira.dll) is a bit cumbersome to use, but
it’s worth persevering with because ticket prices are very reasonable. Some tickets are available three months prior to
travel, while others can only be purchased two months in advance. The MAV website
will make it clear when tickets are available. In addition, when travelling on some routes, only certain
types of tickets can be purchased in advance. We wanted a sleeping compartment
to travel on the night train from Brasov (Romania) to Budapest but only second
class berths were available. To get our own compartment, we booked and paid for a berth for our
daughter as well (who was staying in New Zealand!) - it was much cheaper to book a 3-person compartment (total cost 147 euros) using the MAV website than purchasing a 2-person berth from a New Zealand travel website.
Waiting for our train in Sibiu, Romania
· Romanian (CFR) website www.cfrcalatori.ro/270 We used this site to book seats for the second
class train from Sibiu to Brasov in Romania. The tickets are priced in Romanian Leu and are available just one month
in advance, but are cheaper on the net than they would have been on the day of
travel. Purchasing the tickets in advance overcame potential language
difficulties in Romania.
· We didn't use the Dutch rail site in the Netherland; instead, we purchased OV-chipkaart travel cards. We loaded these up
with Euros at Amsterdam Centraal station upon arrival in Holland. These cards can be used for internal rail travel in Holland (we visited Lyn’s relatives and
friends in both the north and the south of Holland during our short visit
there) and also on trams in Amsterdam. The only glitch was that in one
railway station (but not others!) there were separate machines for logging on and
logging off the system. When attempting to “log on” as we left Leeuwarden, we used the “log off” machine by mistake. This cost both
of us an extra 10 euros because the train conductor required us to "log on" again at
the next station. Chatting with fellow (Dutch) passengers, we found out that others had
experienced similar problems at this station.
Our train travel throughout Europe was always comfortable and the carriages and cabins were clean. On some trips we met fellow travellers, on others we had a whole
compartment, or even a whole carriage, to ourselves. We took our own
lunches, water, and wine so we didn’t need to sample food from the restaurant cars.
Toilets
were clean, with the unlikely exception being some trains in Holland. Sometimes toilet paper ran out on a big trip, so make sure you have some of
your own.
Passports
were checked only on the Romanian – Hungarian border. No hassles there with our NZ
passports, but the passport control does delay the trains.
The
tickets we purchased, including seat reservations, with the price in $NZ per
person were:
Budapest
to Sibiu (1st Class) $110 (10 hours)
Sibiu
to Brasov (2nd Class) $14 (2 ½ hours)
Brasov
to Budapest (2nd Class Sleeper) $125 (12 hours)
Budapest
to Prague (1st Class) $59 (7 hours)
Prague
to Berlin (2nd Class) $53 (6 ½ hours)
Berlin
to Amsterdam (1st Class) $124 (8 hours)
